LOS ANGELES, July 2 -- When James Gunn and Peter Safran took the keys to DC Studios in early 2023, the promise they made to Warner Bros. was not that every film would be a hit. It was that the misses would never be allowed to harden into a narrative. Supergirl is the first real test of that promise, and the way Safran chose to handle the weekend says more about the studio's plan than the grosses do.

The Craig Gillespie film, led by Milly Alcock, opened to $38 million domestically and $68 million worldwide, beneath the roughly $55 million Warner Bros. had been tracking toward only two weeks earlier. Rather than let the figure sit and curdle, Safran went on the record. He told the New York Times on Sunday that while Supergirl "didn't meet ...